er, but the men
were getting a little impatient, and I thought it better to sacrifice my
own pleasure to theirs. That day we caught a cracking breeze out of the
Windward Passage, and toward midnight we came up with this little sandy
island here.

"The preparations for going into port excited the curiosity of my bride;
for, poor thing! she believed we were bound into Porto Rico, and I had
some trouble in inducing her to go below before we crossed the reef.
_Bueno!_ the coast was clear, the signals were all right, and an hour
later the schooner had her anchor down and sails furled pretty much in
the spot where she now lies moored.

"While, however, we were sweeping up the inlet, I sent a boat ahead,
with directions for my tidy old housekeeper, Babette, to have every
thing prepared to receive her new mistress. Just then one of those
terrible thunder-storms came up; heavy masses of clouds obscured the
sky, followed by such double-barrel shocks and intensely vivid lightning
as is only beheld in the tropics preceding the equinox. The rain, too,
came along in horizontal sheets, driven by a squall which burst in fury
over the island, and it seemed to me that all the devils from hell were
howling and shrieking in the air.

"Shielded from the storm by a large boat-cloak, I carried my beautiful
bride, with her face nestling on my breast, to the cove, and then I bore
her into this fine saloon.

"I shall never forget the sweet words she whispered, and the loving
caresses she gave me on that little journey, even while the tempest
almost dashed me to the ground, and the sharp flashes of lightning
nearly blinded me. They were the last she ever lavished upon me."

No sigh escaped the lips of this cold-blooded monster as he uttered
these words; no sign of feeling for the ruin of a gentle girl whom he
had betrayed to his piratical den of infamy and crime--whose dream of
life was destroyed like a crushed rose-leaf, and all her hope gone from
that moment.

CHAPTER XVII.

DOOM OF DONA LUCIA.

"I went into the storm,
And mocked the billows of the tossing sea;
I said to Fate, What wilt thou do to me?
I have not harmed a worm!

"Thy dim eyes tell a tale--
A piteous tale of vigils; and the trace
Of bitter tears is on thy beauteous face;
Beauteous, and yet so pale!"

"Thus it ever is, _caballeros_, and ever will be," went on Captain
Brand, in rather a reflecting strain. "There is a p